Bergson and His Philosophy

fter all, we may begin to reflect, he has been too successful, he has
proved too much. In attempting to use, as he was bound to do, the
intelligence to discredit the intelligence he has been attempting the
impossible. He has only succeeded in demonstrating the authority, the
magisterial power, of the intelligence. No step in Philosophy can be
taken without it. What are Life, Consciousness, Evolution, even
Movement, as these terms are employed by Bergson, but the symbolization
of concepts which on his own showing are the peculiar products of the
human understanding or intelligence? It seems, indeed, on reflection,
the oddest thing that Philosophy should be employed in the service of an
anti-intellectual, or as it would be truer to call it a supra-
intellectual, attitude. Philosophy is a thinking view of things. It
represents the most persistent effort of the human intelligence to
satisfy its own needs, to attempt to solve the problems which it has
created: in the familiar phrase, to heal the wounds which it ha